Top 10 Tuesday: Greatest Sitcoms of My Lifetime
October 10th, 2006 | by Scott |I turn to television for this week’s entry. My guidelines were as follows:
–TV shows that aired after 1968. I thought about broadening it further (which would have opened up such fare as Andy Griffith, Burns & Allen, and I Married Joan) but decided to limit the scope a bit.
–It had to be consistently good throughout the run of the show (Therefore, you will not see Friends on this list. Sorry, but if you think the last few years of that show was good television, then you need to put the glue down.)
–I omitted current shows. Therefore shows such as Curb Your Enthusiasm, Scrubs and The Office are not on this list.
Here we go:
10. Night Court: Harry and company hold court producing countless shenanigans. Top notch cast with Anderson and Larroquette and requisite hotness with Markie Post.
9. Newsradio–Phil Hartman was one of the funniest men who ever lived. Ever single character on this show blended together to produce a dysfunctional radio family. As often happens with great sitcoms it never fully caught on ratings-wise. The inconsistent whims of NBC didn’t help.
8. Mary Tyler Moore–This show rates in the top 10 for it’s groundbreaking status as much as anything else. The producers stopped short of making Moore a divorce woman, but her status as the first single woman driven show. This show was consistently good with indelible characters such as Lou Grant (who had a pretty decent spin-off) and Ted Baxter.
7. Everybody Loves Raymond–Yes, they do. Yes, they do.
6. Cheers–Remember when Kirstie Alley was funny? And hot? This show was the epitome of consistency and produced scads of memorable lines and characters.
5. Arrested Development–It is one of the greatest crimes of mankind that this show never caught on. It is the most intelligent comedy to come down the pike in years. The recurring themes, jokes introduced in one show that paid off 10 episodes later, and spot-on narration by Ron Howard combined to create the greatest comedy of this millennium.
4. Good Neighbors–Never heard of this one? Then run to Netflix or whatever you use NOW and rent it. This is the story of a man who decides to be completely self-sufficient while living in an upper-middle class British neighborhood. It ran for 4 seasons on the BBC in the mid 70s with 30 total episodes. It was titled The Good Life in Britain and retitled for America. GET THIS SITCOM.
3. All In the Family–Greatest.Social.Commentary.TV.Show.Ever. Nothing comes close.
2. Seinfeld–It takes a lot to make me want to watch a show about nothing. Comedic genius at its finest.
1. Sports Night–I still feel robbed and harbor a great amount of animosity that ABC only gave us two years of this show. It redefined the sitcom and brought it to an entirely new level of intelligence, freshness and dialogue. This is Sorkin at his best. I still feel that West Wing was a dumbed down version of Sports Night. If you have never seen this, do yourself the favor and pick it up.
Thoughts?